NS announed that their profits were up 38% in the last quarter. They are so efficient that it is amazing. Imagine how UP would change and become efficient if NS bought them. NO more delays due to lack of motive power or crews, they don’t want to service your business, or just decide to delay the train your cargo is on. Fast efficent continental transportation of goods. I SURE WISH IT WOULD HAPPEN!!!
This calls for a laughtrack, if you believe that would happen, it calls for a laughtrack of uncontrollable hilarity. Especially the part about the crew availability and motive power availability, surely you’ve got tongue firmly stuck in cheek.
Hell will freeze over before THAT ever happens! No, I think the possibility of the U.P. ever being bought out by another road is extremely, extremely remote and light years away. It’s not gonna happen.
CANADIANPACIFIC2816
“There was a time in this fair land when the railroad did not run, when the wild majestic mountains stood alone against the sun, long before the white man and long before the wheel, when the green, dark forest was too silent to be real.” Gordon Lightfoot
Silly me - I was laughing before I even opened the topic. But minding my manners - I will say I hope you are not really serious.
Sorry for the delayed reply on this one…had to stop laughing first. I will simply bring up NS’s takeover of Conrail to contradict pretty much everything that was said about the efficient takeover of UP. Sidings filled with dead trains (w/no crews in sight), plugged up yards, lack of motive power, botched computer data, etc. And this was for a RR that ran predominantly in the Northeast; nowhere near as big as UP…and NS only took over a little more than half of it! I can’t even begin to imagine the nightmare that would follow an NS takeover of UP. Grocery stores empty because their produce is sitting in a siding in Timbuktu, or no new cars on the lot because they’re still waiting to be picked up at the assembly plant. Efficient? More like chaotic.
Um…two thoughts.
NS has lots of trains held for power and crew. Operations is not nearly perfect.
Even if NS was perfect, how would their owning UP magically create extra locomotives and improve crew pool population on the UP? NS posesses no magic.
If NS is so amazing in its efficiency, then perhaps you could explain why their previous quarterly profits were down 11% (yoy)…[:(]
Upon reading the title of this thread, my first thought was of the comment in the movie Wayne’s World about the origin of flying monkeys.[:P]
Gotta look at the details if you want to use net after taxes to measure operating efficiency.
http://www.nscorp.com/nscorphtml/speech06/hcw072606/hcw072606.pdf
slide 23
2nd quarter YOY +14%
The net after provision for income taxes was down 12% in the second Qtr because of a one time deal regarding Ohio taxation - that was a net +$96M plus some other tax law mumbo jumbo. see slide 27
Wouldnt there be a mess of anti-trust issues stirred up by this? jus wondering…[%-)]
RRs mergers don’t get Justice Dept review anymore, just STB review. The standard is “no reduction in rail competition”. So, generally, for most locations that have only NS and UP service, now, some accomodation would have to be made to allow another road in (trackage rights, line sale, etc)
Since UP + NS would be mostly end-to-end, there wouldn’t be many of these type of locations to worry about.
I wonder if this (hopefully hypothetical) case would be different ? Wouldn’t there be concerns about too much concentration of power, and the distorting effect of such ?
Anyways, what are you going to name such a combination ? Scope for much imagination, chaps (and chappesses).
Germanium
Nope. The merger rules are pretty well spelled out by the STB. There is one new thing the applicants have to do and that is assess the fallout from their merger. That is, if NS and UP apply to merge, then they have to present the how the rest of the rail industry would react. In this example, the supposition would be that BNSF and CSX would have to allign to compete, so they’d have to have some idea how that might work out.
But, that’s it. NS + UP wouldn’t be any bigger than UPS, for example, so even if the STB were allowed to take “managability” into account, I doubt it would matter. We’re already way past the point were a RR can be managed in the chief operation officer’s head.
Oh, Its happening… one ex-CNW unit at a time… [:P]
If they do merge, they should also buy the Down East Senic Railroad. gives them trackage in Maine, and then they could become The Union Pacific Southern Norfork and Down East, or,
UPS’N’Down.[%-)]
How about “PUNS”? “SPUN”? Better yet, “SNUP” All would look reasonably ridiculous in a swoopin acronym.
Hello NS stallion, goodbye armor yellow!!!
Hell no. They tried that and it still didn’t work. Nothing will make that ugly ywllow go away.
What if pigs flew?
LC
A pig won’t fly, so much as plummet! NS would have to make UP’s major shareholders an offer that would leave NS in the red for decades! NS is not stupid, UP would be very, very expensive to buy out. And UP does not wish to merge with anyone right now. They are still digesting SP!